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THE DECIMATION OF GAZA’S ACADEMIA IS ‘IMPOSSIBLE TO QUANTIFY’
 
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Ibtisam Mahdi
July 26, 2024
972 Magazine
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_ With thousands of faculty and students likely killed and campuses
destroyed, Palestinian universities in the Strip are barely surviving
Israel’s scholasticide. _

A Palestinian woman sits in front of the damaged entrance to Al-Aqsa
University in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, January 26, 2024, Atia
Mohammed/Flash90

 

Dr. Refaat Alareer was a good friend of mine. A poet, writer, and
prominent activist for the Palestinian cause, Refaat taught English
literature and poetry for many years at the Islamic University of
Gaza. He loved the works of Shakespeare, Thomas White, John Donne,
Wilfred Owen, and many others, and he was the editor of two books:
“Gaza Unsilenced
[[link removed]]“ and
“Gaza Writes Back
[[link removed]].”

Refaat is one of at least 105 Palestinian academics killed in Gaza
since the start of Israel’s war, according to the Palestinian
Education Ministry’s latest statistics
[[link removed]]. His home
institution, the Islamic University, has been completely demolished by
the bombing campaign — and all of Gaza’s 19 universities have
sustained severe damage or lie in utter ruins, with over 80 percent
[[link removed]] of
university buildings destroyed. The Strip’s nearly 90,000 students
who were enrolled in institutions of higher learning before the war
have largely been unable to continue their studies.

The annihilation of higher education is particularly tragic for
Gaza’s future: this source of learning, economic growth,
livelihoods, and community is now gone. But the stories of the
teachers and schools we have lost, and the educational opportunities
that are now foreclosed, deserve to be told.

Refaat understood the importance of education better than most. He
encouraged me to learn English for my work as a journalist, and he
loved teaching me new words in both English and Arabic. “Through
storytelling,” he would remind me, “we affirm our right to this
land. And learning the English language is a means of breaking free
from the prolonged siege of Gaza.”

In the Israeli airstrike that took Refaat’s life on Dec. 7, his
brother Salah and nephew Mohammad, as well as his sister Asmaa and her
three children, Alaa, Yahya, and Muhammad, were martyred alongside
him, and other family members were wounded. Three of Refaat’s sons
— one of whom was in his first year at university — and his three
daughters stayed with their mother in another shelter and survived.

[Refaat Alareer. (Palestinian Information Center)]
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Refaat Alareer. (Palestinian Information Center)
Refaat Alareer. (Palestinian Information Center)

Refaat’s cousin, Muhammad Alareer, said that he believes the Israeli
army targeted Refaat precisely because of his scholarship and fluency
in English — as well as his work with the “We Are Not Numbers
[[link removed]]” project, a Palestinian non-profit
that Refaat co-founded in 2015. “Before the attack,” Muhammad told
+972, “he received many death threats online and via mobile phone
from Israeli accounts, demanding him to stop writing and
publishing.”

According to Muhammad, Refaat received a phone call from someone who
identified himself as an Israeli officer, saying that the military
knew exactly where he was located, and that he would be assassinated
or detained if he continued writing. This threat prompted Refaat to
leave his wife and children at the UNRWA school in Al-Tuffah,
northeast of Gaza City. He went to his sister’s house, thinking it
would be safer than the school — but he was sadly mistaken. 

‘HE EXPECTED TO BE TARGETED’

Among the many Palestinian academics killed in Gaza since Oct. 7 were
three university presidents. The 53-year-old physicist Dr. Sofyan
Abdel Rahman Taya was serving as the president of the Islamic
University of Gaza when he was killed in an Israeli airstrike on
Jabalia on Dec. 2 along with his wife, parents, and five children.

+972 spoke to Dr. Taya’s brother Nabil, who described how much
Sofyan loved his work and cared deeply about his family and those
around him. His research on optical waveguides and biosensors won him
numerous awards and honors, including the Palestine Islamic Bank Award
for Scientific Research, the Abdul Hameed Shoman Award for Young Arab
Scientists, and the Islamic University Award for Scientific Research.
In March 2023, Dr. Taya was appointed as the UNESCO Chair for Physics,
Astrophysics, and Space Sciences in Palestine. As university
president, he had a clear goal: to pursue both scientific research and
community service, as the cornerstones of the university’s mission.

[Dr. Sofyan Abdel Rahman Taya. (Courtesy)]
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Dr. Sofyan Abdel Rahman Taya. (Courtesy)
Dr. Sofyan Abdel Rahman Taya. (Courtesy)

But in the weeks before he was killed, Nabil told +972, Sofyan
“expected to be targeted, especially after many academic and
administrative staff at the Islamic University were assassinated
before him.” These included Omar Farwana, Dean of the Faculty of
Medicine, and Dr. Muhammad Shabir, the former president of the
university. After Taya and Shabir, Dr. Said Anwar Alzebda, of the
University College of Applied Sciences in Gaza, was the third
university president killed along with several members of his family
on Dec. 31.

Dr. Khitam Al-Wasifi
[[link removed]], head of the
Physics Department at the Islamic University and vice dean of its
College of Science, was another prominent Palestinian academic who was
killed along with her husband — also a professor at the Islamic
University — and children on Dec. 1. Known by colleagues and friends
as the “Sheikha of Physicists,” she published dozens of articles
on magnetoelectricity and optoelectronics, and was awarded several
honors for her work.

Many surviving faculty members saw the deaths of these academics as
the deliberate targeting of prominent intellectuals in Gaza — and,
as a result, many declined to be interviewed for this article, for
fear of being assassinated themselves. By killing influential academic
figures, according to Salah Abd El Atei, the president of the
International Commission to Support Palestinian Rights (Hashd) who
spoke to +972 from Cairo, Israel aims “to destroy everything
symbolic in Palestinian society so that the people in Gaza do not have
figures they can rely on in the future.”

CAMPUSES IN RUIN 

On Oct. 11, Israel bombed
[[link removed]] the
Islamic University of Gaza, razing the entire campus. Among the
demolished structures was the university mosque, in contravention of
international laws prohibiting attacks on places of worship. The
university had been damaged in previous wars, but the scale of the
current destruction is unprecedented.

[View of the destruction at Al-Aqsa University, February 10, 2024
(Omar Elqataa)]
[[link removed]] View of
the destruction at Al-Aqsa University, February 10, 2024 (Omar
Elqataa)
View of the destruction at Al-Aqsa University, Gaza City, February 10,
2024 (Omar Elqataa)

U.N. experts have estimated
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80 percent of schools and universities have been damaged or destroyed
since October — amounting, in their view, to “scholasticide.”
“It may be reasonable to ask,” the experts wrote, “if there is
an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian
education system.”

Al-Azhar University’s main campus in Gaza City and its branch in
Al-Mughraqa were laid to waste by repeated Israeli airstrikes in the
first few months of the war. Before October, according to Muhammad
Al-Wazir, a professor at the university, the university was composed
of 12 colleges, collectively offering bachelor’s degrees in 77
majors, 33 master’s programs, and four doctoral programs.

Like the Islamic University, Al-Azhar was repeatedly targeted during
previous escalations in Gaza. “Each time,” Al-Wazir told +972,
“the university promptly reached out to Arab, Islamic, and
international institutions to help repair the damage.” After this
war, however, the university will be forced to rebuild from
scratch. As Al-Wazir pointed out, the destruction of Al-Azhar
University was one of the pieces of evidence South Africa presented
[[link removed]] during
its argument before the International Court of Justice as evidence of
Israel’s systematic and intentional destruction of educational
infrastructure.

Israa University, the University of Palestine, Gaza University,
Al-Quds Open University, and Al-Aqsa University — my alma mater —
have all faced similar wreckage. So many staff members have been
killed and virtually all students and employees displaced that a full
account of the destruction is extremely challenging. “It is not
possible to quantify the damage incurred by the university,” said
Dr. Imad Abu Kishek, the president of Al-Quds Open University. “Nor
can we determine this situation while we are losing the essential
element, the human beings — academics, technicians, workers, and
students — on a daily basis.”

[Al-Quds Open University, November 25, 2023. (Omar Elqataa)]
[[link removed]] Al-Quds
Open University, November 25, 2023. (Omar Elqataa)
Al-Quds Open University, November 25, 2023. (Omar Elqataa)

University infrastructure that benefited the Palestinian public has
also been destroyed. Israa University was home to a national museum,
licensed by the Tourism and Antiquities Ministry — “the first of
its kind on the national level,” as Ahmed Juma’a, a lecturer at
the university, explained to +972. “It housed over 3,000 artifacts.
The occupation soldiers and officers looted them before blowing up the
museum building.” There have also been multiple
[[link removed]] reports
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Israeli soldiers used Israa University as a makeshift military base
and detention center, before blowing up
[[link removed]] the remaining
buildings in January.

It is not only students and professors who bear the loss of Gaza’s
universities, but all Palestinians in Gaza who have been deprived of
the benefits of a vibrant academic community — everything from arts
and culture to medical care. Esraa Hammad was a dental student at the
University of Palestine before October 7. “I studied there for five
years and was about to obtain my degree,” she said, “but all of
that ended with a decision from the occupation army.”

For Esraa, the most meaningful part of her studies was her work with
dental patients in the university’s clinics. “I felt proud of my
education and my professors, especially when people would come to
thank me for relieving them from tooth pain and helping them return to
their normal lives for free.”

‘WE INSIST ON CONTINUING STUDENTS’ EDUCATION’

Many see the destruction of academic life in Gaza as part of
Israel’s aim to ensure that Palestinians have no future in the
Strip. According to Abd El Atei, “The army has been seeking to
destroy all aspects of life in the Gaza Strip, making it uninhabitable
and pushing its residents to migrate to European countries.”

For Dr. Ali Abu Saada, Director General of Higher Education at
Gaza’s Education Ministry, the targeting of educational institutions
is “part of an effort to strip Palestinians of their essential
components of life: thought, culture, and education.” Although
university structures may be rebuilt after the war, Abu Saada believes
Israel intends to send the message that Palestinians will face a
future with “no place for education and no teachers to teach — a
reality that helps accelerate migration, which is what the occupier
seeks.”

[Islamic University of Gaza, February 15, 2024. (Omar Elqataa)]
[[link removed]] Islamic
University of Gaza, February 15, 2024. (Omar Elqataa)
Islamic University of Gaza, Gaza City, February 15, 2024. (Omar
Elqataa)

Yet despite the damage, there are still efforts among Palestinians in
Gaza to continue teaching and learning. Al-Azhar University has issued
a statement calling on students to continue their semesters remotely.
Al-Wazir, the Al-Azhar professor, said this “is a way to challenge
the reality imposed by the Israeli army’s destruction of
universities — so that the academic year does not go to waste for
students.”

Dr. Muhammad Hamdan, director of public relations at Al-Aqsa
University, confirms that most universities in the Gaza Strip have
returned to distance learning, “as a way to insist on continuing
students’ education.” At Al-Aqsa, most remote classes focus on
more theoretical subjects, for which there are lectures available on
the university’s online educational platform. Several lecturers
outside of Gaza, Hamdan notes, supervise this platform and hold new
remote lectures as necessary.

Distance learning during war, however, cannot happen with consistency.
Ayman Safi, a third-year student in Information Technology at
Al-Azhar, registered for online classes at his university as soon as
they became available. But as he told +972, downloading “academic
materials from the platform to the laptop or mobile phone, including
textbooks, requires strong internet,” and he is forced to travel
more than four kilometers to find a sufficient connection.

“I try to study during the night,” Safi said, as he prepares for
his midterm exams, “because during the day I have many other duties:
providing water and firewood [for my family], charging the batteries
for our phones and laptops, and lighting a fire to prepare food.” On
class days, he wakes up early to attend to his family’s needs,
before traveling to access the internet. But when he arrives, he
admits, “I have a hard time following the lectures or the
information in my textbooks.” Despite this, he is “trying to
finish this school year in any way possible.”

[The College of Applied Sciences at Al-Azhar University, Feburary 15,
2024. (Omar Elqataa)]
[[link removed]] The
College of Applied Sciences at Al-Azhar University, Feburary 15, 2024.
(Omar Elqataa)
The College of Applied Sciences at Al-Azhar University, Gaza City,
February 15, 2024. (Omar Elqataa)

Universities in Gaza have made it easier to cross-register between
different institutions, which Majd Mahdi, a medical student at the
Islamic University of Gaza, has taken advantage of. “I persevered in
high school in order to study medicine, which was my dream,” she
told +972. After her university was destroyed, she was able to enroll
in classes at Cairo University in Egypt and An-Najah University in
Nablus.

Universities in the West Bank such as An-Najah, with help from the
Education Ministry, have opened their doors to students in Gaza who
are able to learn remotely, and tens of thousands
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for the spring and summer semesters. But while their buildings are
still standing, these institutions have faced lockdowns and other
disruptions since October 7, while the Israeli military and settlers
make it increasingly difficult for Palestinians in the West Bank to
move freely between their homes and school.

For Mahdi, continuing her education from a tent in Al-Mawasi
[[link removed]], west of Khan
Younis, has proved nearly impossible. “We don’t have a source of
electricity,” she said, “so every time my laptop runs out of
battery, I have to go to one of the charging points and it needs a
while to charge.” Even when she is able to resume studying, however,
“it is difficult to follow all the lectures and [communicate] with
lecturers via WhatsApp, since there is no constant internet
connection.”

* Gaza
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* Israel
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